Rumor Roundup

Hello and welcome to MacValley’s round-up of rumors, canards, and all-around falsehoods.

Jonathan Geller reports in Boy Genius Report that Microsoft will indeed launch Office for iOS in November. His source tells him that M$ will port the full Office suite to iOS and Android.

I have questions. Even Office 2011 for the Mac only has Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook. Now Microsoft has ported OneNote to iOS. What about Microsoft Access, the database? It would face head-on competition from Filemaker for iOS and its little brother, Bentos for iOS.

So we’ll have something to look forward to in November. I’ll deal with you after the dirty Thanksgiving dishes.

Now for something real and tangible. Jonathan Ive, Senior VP of Industrial Design for Apple, Inc., is now Sir Jonathan Ive. He was knighted by Princess Anne at Buckingham Palace. Congratulations to Sir Jonathan.

And in hard-core nerdery, Apple filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office patent paperwork showing how OS X would accommodate higher and higher screen resolutions.

And finally, a long-time Apple hardware vendor, LaCie, has been bought by Seagate. For $186 million. So we’re not talking Facebook-sized sums, but $186 large is nothing to sneeze at. As a long-time user of LaCie products, I can attest to their value.

Oh, we musn’t leave the continuing saga of Apple and Samsung, the Bickersons of high-tech. The Court ordered them to sit down and behave like adults, but nothing came of it. Oh well, Another day, another billable 24 hours.